Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Who Are Ya Gonna Believe...

...me or your lyin' eyes?

I was never exactly what you'd call a groupie of Zionism. Israel's bloodlust and ceaseless, brutal conquest of surrounding lands through acts of terrorism and fascist tactics would make an enemy of even the most mild-mannered thinking person. But when I read stories such as this, generously quoting the spokesman of Israel's Defense Ministry, Yigal Palmor (Facebook page here)... Let's just say that it's a good thing Obama got elected President instead of me because I'd be racing for that red button, demanding launch codes and getting coordinates to Tel Aviv my first minute in office.

Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian physician who has extensive experience practicing medicine in the Gaza strip with his partner Dr. Erik Fosse, told the Lancet that Gaza hospitals are overwhelmed with "nightmarish havoc." In it, they told stories in which doctors have had to perform surgery using illumination from cell phone lights.

(Note that this AP story, regardless of who's hosting it, just shows you a picture of wounded Israeli soldiers getting rushed to the hospital, not Palestinians.)

Here are some sobering figures that put the weight of validity to Dr. Gilbert's observations:

The Lancet cited the Ministry of Health in Gaza as saying that as of Monday, 292 children and 75 women had been killed in the offensive, with 1,497 children and 626 women wounded.

According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the death toll is somewhat lower: As of Wednesday, it said, 225 children and 70 women had been killed. However, the ministry defines children as 18 and under, the Palestinian Center 17 and under.

Now, this is the response from Yigal Palmor, if you can stomach reading it to the end:

"Dr. Gilbert is notorious for his radical far left opinions and his systematic demonizaton of Israel. He has already accused Israel of almost every nightmarish crime in the book only to ignore the refutation of every one of his allegations. His stories are worthy of Dante's imagination but have been proved time and again to be far removed from reality. It is a pity that serious members of the medical profession should allow themselves to be dragged into an excessive of mad Mads."

Apparently, any denunciation of Israeli terror is automatically anti-Semitic and anti-Israel, according to Palmor. For instance, this is what Palmor said Dec. 10 of Richard Falk's criticism of Israel's humanitarian shortcomings in Gaza in the days leading up to the Dec. 27 attacks:

"The credibility of this expert has suffered a major blow with this announcement, which consists more of anti-Israel propaganda than truth."

Or how about this after Cardinal Martino, the Vatican's Justice and Peace Minister, called Gaza "A big concentration camp":

"(It is) the vocabulary of Hamas propaganda, coming from a member of the College of Cardinals. Making remarks that seem to be based on Hamas propaganda while ignoring its numerous crimes ... does not bring the people closer to truth and peace."

Neither does Israel's Ted Bundy style of foreign policy. And, to be perfectly honest, I cannot remember the last time that any member of the Vatican willingly made themself a mouthpiece for "Hamas propaganda."

Not content with Palmor's neurotic invective, even the Madoff-bankrupted Simon Wiesenthal Center had to get in the act and call Martino "a Holocaust denier" on a par with Ahmadinejad, despite the fact that Martino made a blatant and unmistakable reference to the very venues of the Holocaust.

In other words, Bring up the disproportionate carnage of our actions and be branded an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier.

I don't know what's more nauseating, folks: This right wing lunatic Palmor branding as a Hamas propagandist and leftist everyone who cites facts after having worked in this war zone or the United States Senate holding a vote while our nation is falling down around our ears in order to reaffirm Israel's right to defend itself. Which is sort of like a judge reaffirming a wife batterer's right to defend himself after sending his wife to the Critical Care Unit for scratching his face.

Then again, the Democratic party has proven to be merely a more moderate wing of the Likud party, which obviously dictates our foreign policy in the Middle East considering that Ehud Olmert actually talked Bush into not allowing Condoleezza Rice to vote in the UN for a cease fire in Gaza.

Olmert got Bush off a podium in Philadelphia to order him to instruct her not to vote for a cease fire that could've helped save hundreds of lives.

6 Comments:

Good job collecting the wide and varied criticism of this debacle into one place. Who am I gonna believe? Certainly not the agitprop and distraction I see on the TeeVee news. I'm sure both the Likud Party and the GOP hold Internet technology in utter distain - it undermines the dissemination of state propaganda. You can bet there's a fix in the works...

Just as Goodwin's law prohibits an analogy to Hitler/Nazis, in my own lexicon, playing the holocaust card unless one is specifically discussing WWII historically, automatically gets you ignored.

Past victimhood is not a get out of jail free card and eternal excuse to commit war crimes against other peoples.

Time for everyone to take a collective breath and get real about what is happening in Israel.

If this were 1620 there wouldnt be an arab left in Gaza or the West Bank. Israel is expelling arabs left and right, by murder and or by making their lives so miserable they will just give up and leave.

Gaza is like a reservation under siege. The Israelis are terrorists and barbarians and Israel will never have a place in this world until and unless it stops the slaughter.

Israel has no more right to exist than any state on Earth, which is to say, not at all. If states had the "right to exist" Palestine would not have been displaced in 1948.

And fuck anyone in advance who claims my comments are anti-semetic (what a stupid phrase -- racism is racism) and/or that I am a holocaust denier.

Interesting the word "holocaust" is a Hebrew word that means "blood sacrifice." The Germans did not "sacrifice" Jewish lives or anyone else they found undesireable, they SLAUGHTERED them.

So, whose "sacrifice" was it and why was a "sacrifice" made? Gee, couldnt have been to justify the invasion and theft of Palestine in order to create the state of Israel?

I am sick and fucking tired7 of Israel's zionist pigs hiding behind the holocaust anytime anyone points out that their conduct is no better than that of the Nazis.

Fuck zionists. I am sickened that the US congress is full of APAIC bots who dutifully do whatever their zionist masters tell themn to do.

Israek us a terrorist state and its crimes against humanity MUST BE STOPPED. Same with the USA.

And by the way, did you know that there happens to be gas - worth an estimated $4 billion - offshore of Gaza? BP and the Israeli government have negotiated the starving Palestinians completely out of the picture.

I think that one of the posters over at Pat Lang's Sic Semper Tyrannis nailed the modus operandi of the "If-you-criticize-Israel-you're-an-antisemite" crowd quite well. To wit:

HEre's the hasbara logic on killing civilians including children:

1) Israel does not do it. The IDF is a humane army

2) Israel does not do it on purpose. The terrorists force Israel to kill civilians, it is not Israel's fault if they are in the way of Israel's bombs. In fact, terrorists are so diabolical that they hide among their women and children, because they know that Israel's army is too humane to shoot at targets that include women and children. Hence Israel is forced to shoot at these targets surrounded by women and children. Israel must not let itself be taken advantage of for its humane policies.

3) If you find evidence that Israel has committed atrocities, violated the rules of warfare, or killed children on purpose, then you must not publish that evidence or hold Israel to account for it. You are an anti-Semite if you discover and point out evidence of Israel's military violating the laws of war.

4) Other countries, especially the US, do exactly the same thing. You are anti-Semitic because you are holding us to a higher standard.

5) It hurts our feelings and restimulates our trauma for you to say such things about us. You must take back what you said, because when our feelings are hurt, everybody else must feel very ashamed.

6) This was all a big mistake, the war is over, and you must forget it and let us move on. To remind us of the past is anti-Semitic. Never forgetting is a privilege reserved only for certain people regarding certain crimes.